Pharmacy - Is it similar to babysitting?

[Truthspeaker]

Is it just me, or are other doctors, my colleagues, getting sloppier with being able to order medications properly? I'm not even talking about dosing errors here, which happen multiple times and on a daily basis where I'm at. I'm talking about the doctors who call the pharmacy non-stop and waste valuable pharmacy FTEs on answering inquiries that should have never been brought up. Yet the pharmacist always helps them no matter how dumb the question is.

My colleague recently tried to make the poor pharmacist order some Heparin-type drug that the pharmacist later found out was only available in Europe. It all stemmed from this resident physician reading that the drug went head to head with Heparin in a clinical trial on UpToDate. Suddenly these young doctors think they are calling all the shots and have the magic bullet to cure the patient that their attending just happened to miss. I don't understand the logic. Make the patient wait around with a blood clot until a drug gets imported from Europe....OR just order heparin.

How do you pharmacists deal with this nonsense with a straight face? If I was down in the basement receiving requests like that I would hang up the phone after telling this resident doctor to stop reading UpToDate, man up & order the patient a drug that we actually have.

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[lane one]

It's not just you. It's rampant at my facility. They don't seem to understand the concept of practicing within their environment. Constantly challenging the formulary to gain some additional sliver of efficacy. When you call them on it they'll cite some case report or garbage observational study with n=20. Your status says pharmacist, no?

 

[RxPreceptor]

I blame the internet...I seriously hate when they send e scripts or try to phone in Rx...using god damn international BRAND names of drugs (tens of thousands). It geniuinely comes across as inexperience & not thinking things through thoroughly

Hah, by the title of this thread, I was imagining this would be about babysitting pharmacy techs

 

[BidingMyTime]

Don't you guys have a protocol for doctors who want to request a non-formulary item? With few exceptions, they shouldn't just be able to call and yell at the pharmacy about it (or if they do, remind them of the process they have to follow.) While in practice, it seems certain doctors will get everything they want OK by the medical director, at least these doctors are ordering something within the realm of reason (and have come up with a half-way decent reasonable reason why.) Generally doctors who are clueless about a therapy, will look at the non-formulary request from and say "expletive, I'm not wasting my time with this.", and then they will order something on formulary.

 

[Dred Pirate]

Don't you guys have a protocol for doctors who want to request a non-formulary item? With few exceptions, they shouldn't just be able to call and yell at the pharmacy about it (or if they do, remind them of the process they have to follow.) While in practice, it seems certain doctors will get everything they want OK by the medical director, at least these doctors are ordering something within the realm of reason (and have come up with a half-way decent reasonable reason why.) Generally doctors who are clueless about a therapy, will look at the non-formulary request from and say "expletive, I'm not wasting my time with this.", and then they will order something on formulary.

I have an email saved with the forms required and process for adding a drug to formulator - I often to offer to send it to the MD's, when they get it - they are like "hell no, too much work, I don't care enough"